The first attack was easy. They were not expected and no one even died.
The three rafts only had a small escort of soldiers. They recognised forestbows and had no wish to try their luck against them; even if they had, the presence of the Reborn terrified them even more than the bows. The guards and rafters were roughed up a bit, on the request of their branch commander so it did not look like they gave up without a fight. Then they were tied and left. The rafts taken by five of the Forestals. Cahan never even drew his axes.
The rafts and their escort vanished.
New Forestals arrived soon after.
The second attack was nearly as easy. There was one death.
This time they had sent one of their Rai with the rafts – they marched at the head of the column, haughty and confident in splendid armour that was bright with paint that glowed in the gloom of Wyrdwood. The Forestals did not give them the opportunity to surrender. Four arrows found them, loosed simultaneously from either side of the track. Their impact made the Rai spin once before they fell to the forest floor, dead. The troops gave up immediately. Two rafts this time, their contents once more vanishing into Wyrdwood. Cahan thought it odd they only sent five with them. Surely it would be better for the whole troop of Forestals, fifteen of them now, to guard them on their way back to their home? Tall Sera only smiled when he suggested it. Soon after five new Forestals arrived, the same five who had left with the first raft.
The third and fourth and fifth column of carts were well guarded, and Tall Sera let them pass unmolested.
“Leave them, hope they get complacent,” he said that night as they cooked raniri over heated stones.
The sixth column of carts almost killed him.
The design of the rafts had changed after the second attack, a box of thick wood now covered the place where the driver sat to control the crownheads. They had also added two extra rafts, one at the front, one at the back, that were covered and held more troops. Thirty soldiers marched together with trunk and branch commanders to make sure they did not simply give up when threatened. The soldiers held thick shields to protect against arrows. Two Rai, these ones having learned their lesson about forestbows, walked within the cover of the soldiers.
“This one we have to earn,” said Tall Sera.
They had already begun working for it. Forestals had weakened some of the huge bushes either side of the track the rafters used to transport their cargo. Now all that held them up was rope, tied to one of their sibling plants and ready to be cut with a well-aimed arrow. They had to stay well back from the track, as the Rai would be reaching out with their cowls for what they could feel of the forest. Cahan would have done the same, if he could. At the thought of it something twitched within him and he felt vertigo, a sense of the death around him, the slowly rotting mulch of the forest floor, the gradual consumption of it by the weave of Ranya’s web, and behind that the other web, the one he had taken from. The one that lived within him now, promising much but within that promise a price, and one he thought too expensive.
For now.
The thought unbidden, and not from outside of him like the voice of the cowl had been, the voice he heard no longer. Once he would have rejoiced at that.
“Ready yourself, Forester,” said Tall Sera, “We will need your axes.”
“What of me?” said Venn. Tall Sera turned to the trion, a twist to his smile and somehow it betrayed his age. The light struck the man so Cahan saw the wrinkles and furrows on his face and knew him for much older than he had thought. The make-up hid much and as the man also had a cowl, though of a different sort, Cahan thought he may be a hundred, possibly even older.
“Hide, and make sure you do it well,” said the Forestal. Then he turned back to watch the path. Waiting until the rafts reached a point he had marked in his mind. The Forestals were well practised, professional. In the early morning gloaming of the emerald canopy, Cahan wondered how many innocent merchants had fallen to them. Then wondered when they had become so adept at taking down Rai. They showed no fear of them, but Rai rarely, if ever, went into the northern Wyrdwood where the Forestals ruled.
The Forestals had secrets, but then again they all did. Apart from Venn, who was as open as the Light Above was bright.
A whistle from Tall Sera. A moment later, an unearthly sound, like souls dragged down by the Osere. Tall Sera smiled.
“The rope cutting arrows scream,” he said.
A wave of fear and confusion passed along the column, soldiers turning, looking around for what horror of Wyrdwood had arrived. Shouting to each other, angry, confused, frightened voices echoing through the glade. A creak, a groan of splintering wood and the bushes, tall as trees came crashing down between the covered rafts with troops in and the cargo rafts and their guards. Fire sputtered around the Rai, shields were raised. More arrows cut through the air and one of the Rai fell, an arrow sticking out of their helmet. The other was quicker getting behind the shields. Shouting came from beyond the fallen bushes. “A trap!”, “It’s a trap!”, called again and again from many throats.
“Wait here,” said Tall Sera; he pulled himself up one of the bushes lining the raftway until he could look down on the panic he had wrought. “Good morning, Rai,” shouted the Forestal. “I would say I am sorry to spoil it for you but I am not. Instead I make you an offer: leave here, and leave those rafts, and you may take your lives with you. Fight and you will not survive, and though we will be sad to kill the soldiers around you, we will not hesitate if they get in our way.”
“Quiet!” This voice roared out from the Rai amid her troops. She stood behind five stout shields, though Cahan did not think they would protect her as well as she thought. There were Forestals up high in the bushes who could shoot down on her. “We have expected you, filth,” she shouted. Her soldiers arrayed themselves behind thick, long shields. “We are prepared for you!”
“Pull back,” said Cahan.
“No,” said Tall Sera, and was there the gleam of obsession in his eye? “They haul willwood. It is too valuable.” He whistled again. Once more the sound of screaming arrows cut the air and the third tree the Forestals had prepared fell.
The huge trunk came crashing down amid the soldiers, causing chaos, killing many.
“Into them, Cahan,” shouted Tall Sera, and he began to loose arrows. “Go for the left raft, we will protect you.” Cahan’s axes were in his hands, warm and familiar. With him came the Reborn, cold and strange. The wall of shields had come apart with the fall of the tree. Before him two guards tried to protect each other, one fell to an arrow in the throat. The other thrust at Cahan with a spear and he danced around it, bringing his right axe across and into the guard’s neck.
“With me! Get the raft,” he shouted at the Harn villagers who had come with him. “Reborn. Protect them.” Fighting, axes rising and falling. Bloody trails in the air. Grunts and screams. The impact of sharp wood on shield, on bone and flesh. Within him something rejoiced, something desired. The Reborn flanked him as he cut his way to the raft, they danced, spinning and twisting, spears finding flesh, small buckler shields deflecting attacks. Behind them the villagers formed a wedge. There was a beauty to the Reborn that Cahan lacked – he was brute force, skilled, no doubt, but he was all strength and fury. A boulder barrelling down a hill, destructive and unstoppable. The Reborn were light, like water. Moving around their targets, not always a killing blow, spear rattling off a shield, off armour. One Reborn pulling attention to her and the other taking advantage, a stab in the back, the side. They worked like one person split in two. Behind them the people of Harn, terrified and fighting despite the fear. Faces drawn, spattered with blood. Spears and shields up. Protecting each other as they headed for the raft.
The Rai before him, fire dancing round her hands. She launched it at him, burning, reaching. He responded. A fire of his own, dark, purple and blue and it hurt, it felt like a scream within him. The Rai fire held at bay, the Rai surprised for just long enough. Cahan’s axe coming down. She was shocked when death found her.
He felt strong. Around him men and women were dying, and he felt it. It he wanted it. This chaos fed him. A hunger within, the purple flame licking blood from his armour.
“Cahan,” shouted a villager, “we have the raft.” They did, and all from Harn had survived. Half were already beginning to push it back towards the forest. The other three fighting to guard them, Reborn dancing among them.
“Protect them!” shouted Cahan, his voice loud enough to cut through the shouting and fighting. “Protect the raft!” It was moving, floating through the air while all around it was blood and fury. The soldiers, incensed by the death of their fellows renewed their attack. A villager fell, spear in the gut and Reborn cut down the attacker. Then Cahan was there, joining those around the raft. Axes rising and falling, thrilling to it. The gut churning nausea of what was within him no longer alien, or painful and miserable. It felt right, like this was who he was meant to be. He felt the bluevein beneath the ground, in the wooden track. It energised him even without reaching for it. He cut a soldier down, his axe biting straight through their shield. His armour was no longer smooth, subtly spiked lines running along his forearm.
“Look right!” called from the forest. He turned, soldiers scrambling over the fallen tree.
“Hurry!” Cahan’s voice unnaturally loud, more hoarse than usual. Arrows raining down on the troops coming over the fallen tree. “Push!” he shouted. “Push the rafts!” He cut down a woman with his left axe. Cut down a man with his right. Blood sprayed over his armour and he felt like a giant, a god. This was him, what he was for. War and destruction. “Come to me!” he shouted, axes held out from his body, “come to me for I am death!” Bluevein, seeping through the rotting logs of the pathway, connecting with him. The attack faltered; it seemed the forest paused around him and he could feel a hundred, thousand million tiny lines of blue beneath the causeway, the ground here thick with it. Tendrils digging into bodies, feeding him.
“Quickly!” shouted from the forest. “Bring the raft.” Ropes, thrown out of Wyrdwood, the villagers attaching them and the raft with them was pulled away.
Cahan, and the Reborn took up the rear, protecting the raft’s retreat. Holding the soldiers here on the raftway. A slow fighting withdrawal that was not too hard, they had taken the heart from the enemy. When Cahan and Venn left the path the Rai’s soldiers stopped at the edge as if it was some form of invisible barrier. Cahan expected a shout, some branch or trunk officer to demand they pursue the thieves of their precious willwood, but none came. As the trees covered him the exultation he felt within died away, the feeling of power ebbing to be replaced with revulsion, not as bad as it had been before. Something of the power clung to him, the way a nettile web clung to skin after passing through it; invisible and uncomfortable, something that he could not see but knew was on him. The villagers and the forestals were already gone. They made to follow them and Cahan was so distracted, he did not notice Venn, considering him. Watching.
Shouts, out in the forest. Coming from either side of them.
“Now!” Movement. All around them.
“Cahan,” said Venn, pointing at the groups of soldiers running toward them. No sign of the raft, no sign of the forestals.
The Forester took hold of his axes and readied himself.
“We have been betrayed,” he said.